 Welcome to a watershed moment, the community media program that celebrates the rivers and connected lands forming the natural circulatory system of our region. The health of these watersheds is intricately tied to that of the humans who live here and affect them. So we invite you to come along as we explore the natural landscape, observe the wildlife, and share the beauty minutes away from our homes and daily commutes. This series will introduce you to the organizations and to the passionate volunteers, organizers, recreationists, athletes, and scientists who work tirelessly to sustain and improve these watersheds. I'm here with Emily Norton, the executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association and Lisa Kumpf, who's the aquatic scientist for the Charles River Watershed Association. Welcome, both of you. Thanks for being here and participating in our program and helping build awareness about the precious watersheds that we have. Thank you so much for having us, Charlotte. I wanted to start with going through your first experience, Emily, and then Lisa maybe, about the river and what was your first experience with the river? So I grew up in the Charles River Watershed. We lived in Weston and then Wayland and then Newton. And I don't have one early memory of the Charles River, possibly because when I was little, the Charles River was kind of gross. So there wasn't any swimming in it. It wasn't the beautiful jewel that it is today. And we're going to be talking about that, how there is still work to be done. But it's much better off than it was. In fact, to prepare for this, I even texted my mom. I was like, where did we used to skate? And we used to skate at the Aberdele Cove and she was like, no, bullows pond. So I don't have one early memory of the Charles River, even though I have lived near it almost all my life. Right. And how about you, Lisa? Yeah. I also grew up in the Charles River Watershed in Medfield. So more in the Middle Upper Watershed. And I used to walk down to the Charles River. Luckily, I was within walking distance and sit there. It was kind of like a calming spot for me. And one of my most prominent memories is the flood of 2010. I lived near a street called Causeway and it was completely flooded in that flood. I remember we walked out and it was about shin deep and just seeing the amazing power of the Charles River as well as the wetlands that are around it. And why don't we go to the type of work that you do and Emily, you're the executive director. How long have you been with the CRWA and? I've been with CRWA almost three years. I began in August 2018. Mm-hmm. And Lisa, have you been around for a while or? I began only a few months before Emily in June 2018. So about three years now too. Awesome. People ask us what do you mean by watershed? You could take turns at this, but what is a watershed? Is it the land, just the water? Is it the land, water and air? Is it the people or all those things? That's a great question, Charlotte. And for the non-scientists, which I am one, I was a philosophy major, the way to think about it is when water falls from the sky and the rain hits the ground, what body of water does it end up in? So that's why it's not intuitive that a community like Holliston is in the watershed because the river doesn't run through Holliston. But indeed, water that hits the ground in Holliston ends up in the Charles River. And so land use decisions made in a community like Holliston and the other, all of the 35 cities and towns of the watershed, the effects of land use decisions made in those communities all affects water quality in the Charles River. Absolutely, it's all connected. Lisa, you want to weigh in on that? No, I mean, I think that was a good description. When I'm when I'm doing presentations with younger kids, I often describe a watershed like a bathtub. You know, when your shower head is going, water might hit the sides of the bathtub or the bottom of the bathtub, but eventually it all makes it into the drain. And you can think of the drain as the Charles River. So no matter where the rain hits in the watershed, it's just a bowl. And it makes its way to the same same part of your your role is probably I mean, not everybody thinks when they spray, you know, a pesticide on their on their garden or, you know, herbicide that it's going to affect something downstream. So a lot of your role is is educating people. But is that sometimes frustrating to see people just doing stuff that you cumulatively totally harms the the ecosystem? So that is one of the challenges, not only for our work, but anyone who works in the area of environmental protection is that a lot of the problems and the solutions are science based or engineering based. And not all of us have a background in hydrology necessarily. So you don't really think about how the decisions we make related to how we manage water and how we develop the land affect our rivers and streams. So, yeah, every time it rains and it hits the ground, in particularly impermeable surface, so your sidewalks, your buildings, your tennis courts, your parking lots, the water is carried along that impermeable surface with all of the pollutants and toxins that are on that surface and it gets carried directly into your waterways. There's no treatment like they're from our sewage. And so that's why so much of our work is related to helping educate policymakers at every level of government, including the local level on things we can do to hold in water and maximize how much it can be infiltrated into the ground where soil actually purifies water on its way to the ground water rather than have it go into our storm drains. You know, a lot of the I mean, just paving and all the streets, it's just it's eliminated that natural filtration system that. Yeah, in in developed environments like cities and towns that has a lot of that impervious surface, about 55 percent of the water that comes from precipitation runs off directly into streams and rivers, whereas in a natural environment like a forest or a wetland, it's actually only 15 percent. So it's a huge difference. And that's what really causes not only the pollution that's ending up in the Charles River, but also just the it really changes the hydrodynamics of, you know, how quickly water moves through the system, which can lead to flooding and drought. This is revealed in the data that we collect. And Lisa might talk about some of our work with water quality monitoring. And we do an annual report card in partnership with the US EPA and this difference in water quality. And I don't want to put this. The difference in water quality is really reflected in the different land use land uses in the different parts of the Charles. So, Lisa, I'm sure you can describe that more eloquently than I just did. Yeah, sure, absolutely. It's it's a direct reflection of the different land uses in the different sections. Last year, we expanded our report card from only reporting on the lower basin, kind of in the Boston Cambridge area to reporting on the entire 80 miles of the river, which we do measure monthly. And we find that the best water quality is really in the middle portion of the watershed, where we have a lot more natural filtration, like wetlands and preserved forests. And then the worst water quality is in the lower basin, which is, of course, surrounded by the most urban areas. And then in the upper watershed, which is kind of along the 495 Belt in Milford and Bellingham, we have kind of intermediate water quality because there is a lot more development going on in that area. And there's especially an increase in the rate of development going along in the 495 corridor. Right. And how many cities and towns have you kind of quantified? How many how many people live in the immediate Charles River watershed? It's close to a million. A million, a million people are affected by or live in the in the Charles River watershed. And it's 35 towns and cities that parts of those at least are in our watershed. Right. And so I know as an association, you're involved in many different initiatives. But what are some of the major ones that were the course of the year where you engage citizens, these million people in caring for the river and caring about the future of the watershed? Yeah, a big part of our work is not just cleaning up the Charles, but also increasing access to it so that people can enjoy it and recreate. So the Earth Day Charles River Cleanup is up has been going on for over 20 years. And that's something that we do in partnership with the Esplanade and Charles River Conservancy and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. And we get thousands of people cleaning up trash along all along the Charles. And that's a really huge, very popular event. We did have to change it up during the pandemic, but we look forward to having it be restored to its full in person group event next year. We also have an annual event called Run of the Charles, which is the largest flat bottom boat race, I believe, in New England. And again, that had to be changed up during the pandemic. But that is a that's a wonderful event where people get out and and race and all in good fun. It's actually fun for corporate groups, sort of a team building event. So those are some ways that people participate with us. We also have people volunteer with pulling invasives from the river and also some of the terrestrial invasive species that are such a problem all around the watershed. And then we have our fundraising events where we have bring people together to help raise money for C.R.W.A. and get to meet one another and enjoy that social time, whether it's on the banks of the Charles at the C.R.I. Boathouse or we we also do our gala at the Museum of Science for the last few years. So we have a number of ways that people can get out and participate with us to help clean up and restore the Charles. And Lisa, do you have a volunteer like citizen scientists who come along with you or do things that you coordinate? Yeah, so that's another major portion of how we get people involved. We have a lot of community science programs. One of our biggest ones that I mentioned is our volunteer monthly monitoring program that's been collecting consistent data on the river since 1995. And then another one is our biological monitoring program, which again is collecting data about streams. So our tributaries that lead into the Charles River. We have a new way to engage if you're out and about on the Lower Charles River near the Esplanade or along the Charles River Reservation in Cambridge. We're looking for people to monitor cyanobacteria blooms, which we will add to our website soon. And yeah, several other opportunities. Do you feel encouraged by your efforts and the is the condition of the watershed generally improving or what are the greatest challenges that you face these days? So it's really interesting to look at the history of what was written about the Charles over the over the decades. And CRWA was founded in 1965 in a time when many people had literally given up on the Charles River. And there are government reports saying that from Nadek to Boston, you just have to give up on the Charles. It's too dirty. It can never be cleaned up. And knowing that that was not true, that when people put their minds to it and decided that that was not acceptable and it took a lot of litigation, we've we've we've been able to significantly clean up the Charles since those days when, you know, when I was a kid, you know, if you were standing next to the Charles in some areas, certainly next to the Boston Harbor, it just reeked of sewage. Wouldn't look at that. There's that there's that photo that's on our and I remember that and you not that photo. I remember what that was like. And so you wouldn't have thought then that it would be possible to make the strides that we have in those days. So that does give me hope, seeing how much cleaner the river is. First grade we gave it was I think it was a D in the 95. So we've come a long way since then. And there's still much more progress to go. And in some ways, we risk backsliding thanks to climate change, bringing new threats to the Charles particularly increased heat and drought and so forth. So our work is far from over, but we've we've been able to do amazing things in the past. And so I think the story of the cleanup of the Charles River is an inspiration not only for further cleanup that we want to do, but just for environmental restoration in general. Obviously, as a planet, we are we're really pushing the planet to the limits of what it can what it can endure. But when we put our minds to it, we can do amazing things. Are there some other events like I know the head of the Charles, which I raised in, but any other like arts and culture, things that people can look forward to over the coming year? Not an event, but one way that we do engage directly with the voting community is through our flagging program, which is a notification program. We have relationships with 12 of the Boat Houses on the lower Charles. And we have water quality models that predict the water quality, whether it's safe for voting or not, on any particular hour, actually. And this program lets people know whether they should be voting on the river or not, lets them make an informed decision, but more importantly, engages them with what the water quality of the river is and how to learn more about it and be an ambassador for the river. For sure. Yeah. Anything else that you would like to tell people about the Charles River Watershed Association? I know that there are other watershed associations so you have regular like interchange of ideas or data or science. Yeah, we work pretty closely with the other watershed organizations on a number of issues, particularly statewide issues when there's when there are bills that will affect rivers in Massachusetts, such as the recent victory in the CSO notification bill. This is a bill that would require public notification when there are sewage releases in any rivers, if you can believe it, that was not something that was required to even notify the public about and notification is not the end goal. The end goal is actually to prevent sewage releases in any of our rivers. But we believe that notification is an important first step to generating the public support for the investments necessary to see rivers to reduce and finally eliminate those sewage releases. This is more of a problem in some of the other rivers, such as the Merrimack is pretty renowned for the sewage problems there. There's sort of probably decades behind where the where the Charles is in terms of eliminating those. But we do work closely with the other watershed groups in those areas. And then just in general, I think it would be helpful to have just a bit of an overview of some of our work and I'll touch on some. And then Lisa should touch on some. So we've made great strides when it comes to eliminating largely eliminating not entirely, but largely eliminating the sewage releases. Now, a bigger challenge, the biggest challenge arguably is stormwater pollution. So we talked about that how really when rain hits those impermeable surfaces, carries all those toxins in, and that's really related to land use and development. And it's very interesting if you think about the names of many of the communities in Massachusetts, Marshfield, Swamskut, Watertown. Actually, a lot of them have water in them because naturally sort of the pre-European colonization era. This was a very watery area. And interesting, I never thought about that. Yeah, it's it's a really recommended book called Reflections on Below's Pond that goes into the environmental history of New England. But basically, in order to have our modern lives with roads and buildings and sidewalks and so forth, we've had to pave over much of this land. And the way that we developed over the years required, or at least the way that we ended up doing it, whether required or not, was culverting streams, bulldozing streams, filling in wetlands, memory swamps. And so we have this wonderful modern lives. But that water had to go somewhere. And especially now in the climate change era, one of the biggest impacts of climate change in the Northeast is increased precipitation, not just overall, but also at one time. So we're having rainstorms with more intensity than we have in the past. And that's only going to continue. And what that means is more flooding because the stormwater systems that were built decades ago are old in their own right. But also they were designed for volumes of rain that that are just less than we're having now and definitely less than we're going to have in the future. So this is an impact on water quality. It's also an impact on public health and safety in terms of just flooding. So much of our work now is working with cities and towns and the state to look at how we develop. Where can we actually depave? Where can we actually conserve land that hasn't been developed? When we are going to do a development, how can we require that more stormwater be kept on site and treated before it's released? So these are these these are hard to do. We we have folks who are making decisions about development who this was not something in their training years and years ago when they went to school, so we're in a new in a new era. And it's not just sort of, you know, the nuts and bolts of how you do things. It's sort of the mindset. How do we have a change our mindset that it's not just about controlling nature? Use but rather working with nature? How do we bring nature back into our built environment? So we do a lot to promote nature based solutions. And we do that on a project by project basis, but also on trying to change laws and regulations and policies so that, you know, you're not having to beg and plead with every developer, but rather, you know, on a case on a project by project basis, which we do a bit of that. But so how do we change change the laws? So this is this is required. And there are some big projects that are going on that we are trying to do this with the I 90 project is a is a good example. That's one where the Alston Viaduct needs to be repaired. It's old and you can when you drive by it, you can see it's actually you can see the rust. So no argument that it needs to be repaired. But the state, the original proposal to repair it is part of the Alston multimodal project. Very cool, where we're looking at get it bringing in more transit, more pedestrian, more cycling benefits. But their original proposal was to put a road into the Charles River, a temperature. Yeah, I remember that big flap a couple of years ago, right? Yeah. And so to me, how how could that even even been on the table? Look at. Thank you so much for for the action you took. Man, that was millions of dollars we spent to clean up the river. And we're going to put a road into it. Road into it. To me, that was an example of an old mindset of like, I don't care, it's just a river stick a road in it. Well, I imagine you your evenings are probably spent going to these towns and going to these town meetings and select board meetings. And so that's that's a good point. Another volunteer effort that we are planning on launching soon is is our River Advocates River Ambassadors program where we're going to be when people will volunteer to do this. We're going to train them when you go to your concom meeting, your city, your select board meeting, here's things to look for. Here's things to advocate for so that we can have more eyes of the river in these communities. We do not have the capacity with a staff of a dozen people to go to, you know, all these concom meetings in 35 cities and towns. But people who love the river, people who are passionate about issues, we will we will train them to be able to do that, to do that in partnership with us. That's fantastic. Sign me up. I mean, I because I've you know, I've evolved in in Arlington, you know, and there's we I go to the select board meetings once in a while in the town meeting and stuff like that. And, you know, there's a there's a push-pull sometimes between the development and the nature and the open space. And, you know, yeah, I'll imagine that in Massachusetts, virtually all of your local elected officials are part time. Most of them do not have staff. Only Cambridge and Boston are full time and have staff. So putting a lot of expectations on local officials, not to say that there aren't staff in these communities, but if the staff aren't already pushing above and beyond when it comes to, you know, rain gardens and bioswales and sort of cool things you can do for the river. If the staff aren't already pushing it and your local elected's don't know anything about it, the residents who are passionate about this can really have a big impact on asking for these things and asking your leaders, what are you doing when it comes to climate resilience? What are you doing when it comes to climate change? And among and within that, what are you doing about climate resilience? That can be very powerful and actually on what things people do. Another example is the Wadette Circle area of Boston, where then Mayor Walsh wanted to put the stadium for the Boston Olympics. And now there's talk of an Amazon distribution center or the T is talking about maybe putting commuter rail trains to be stored there. It's one of the lowest lying areas of the city. It already floods regularly. We think it should be restored as a wetland to prevent flooding that would really be dangerous for a lot of surrounding neighborhoods, including some low income neighborhoods. Again, that'll be a different mindset. So that is something that we are currently in the process of doing some advocacy around. And it's not just us doing this with folks who advocate for transit, for housing, because you want to have a science-based approach. You don't want to be pushing transit investments or housing investments in areas that are going to be flooding, like significantly flooding. So then changing mindsets. So those are some other those are some sort of big things that we are working on. Those are very critical and we'll do our part to help you get some ambassadors. I know some of the people at my rowing club are doing that or either interested in doing that. So let's talk a little bit about education in general and in getting people up to speed on what the watershed needs. Is there are there some things that you specifically do? Or is it kind of incorporated into your other activities? Lisa, you want to take that one? Sure. So our education is really folded into all of the programs that we have, whether it be a project in a specific town or whether it be advocacy on a certain issue. We really try to target target our education about how a watershed works towards whatever age group we're working with. One example right now is we're working with the town of Milford to install some green infrastructure in one of their town parks, which is close to some of their schools, and we're working with the middle schoolers there to educate them about why we're putting this green infrastructure in and how they can be stewards of it once it is in because they use the park for for their gym classes and for baseball games and for lots of other community events. Another thing that we can we do is go to classrooms that request our visits. You can find that on our website and we're happy to talk to your groups at any age about what's going on in the watershed and tailor it towards what what they're learning in the classroom right now. While we're still in the education piece, if you're interested in getting involved and don't really know where to start as an individual, go to our education page and there is a drop down list of several different actions that you can take that will lead you to many different places on our website. We also have some great actions that you can take as a homeowner or if you have a garden in terms of landscaping ways to reduce your water use, etc. Perfect. Wow. Well, anything you want to add, Emily? Yeah. So another example of work that we're doing, which is sort of trying to change the mindset of how we've handled things in the past is dam removal. I'm sure people know there were dozens of dams along the Charles over the last four hundred years that were put there, mostly for industry, and many of them are not in use anymore. And in fact, our hazards they can cause they can cause significant flooding if they are breached and it's expensive to maintain them. So for public safety, but also for ecological health of the river, a free flowing river is much healthier for habitat and for fish. So we're we're advocating for removals of several dams, including the one in Natick. There's one in Rentham that we're working on. And then even the Watertown Dam, and it is a different it's it would be a big change. But many people are excited about that because sometimes you see videos from around the country, even around Massachusetts of sort of before and after where there's dam has been removed and it's exciting. It's restoration. So I hope that folks will will support those efforts. And if anyone would want to get involved, that would be great. We would welcome that. Perfect. Well, listen, this has been very helpful. And let's let's continue the discussion and let us know how we can get raise awareness about what you do. Nothing empowers us to clean up the river more than an engaged residence or workers or, you know, visitors or whatever. Reaching out to local officials say, hey, why haven't you done, you know, X? So the more we have regular people involved with us, the better. Nice. Well, thank you both very much. And we will be continuing the discussion.